YIFY Torrents
YIFY Torrents or YTS is a peer-to-peer release group known for distributing large numbers of movies as free downloads through BitTorrent. YIFY releases were characterised through their HD video quality in a small file size, which attracted many downloaders. The original YIFY/YTS website was shut down by the MPAA in 2015; however, a website imitating the YIFY/YTS brand still gains a significant amount of traffic. History YIFY Torrents was founded by Yiftach Swery in 2010, while he was studying computer science at University of Waikato. Yiftach is an app developer, web developer and archery champion from Auckland, New Zealand. The first YIFY movie releases were the result of Yiftach experimenting with the x264 video codec to encode HD movies in a way that took up as little hard drive space as possible, which were then uploaded to The Pirate Bay. Initially, before the encoding was automated in 2014, the early YIFY releases were encoded on a ten-year old laptop sitting in his bedroom. In August 2011, the YIFY brand was gaining enough traffic to warrant the launch of an official YIFY Torrents Website. The website was blocked by ISPs in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2013, so a mirror domain yify-torrents.im was launched to assist users to bypass the block. The YIFY name continued to generate traction, to the point where in 2013, 'YIFY' was the most searched term on Kickass Torrents, along with other related search terms such as 'yify 720p', 'yify 2013' and 'yify 1080p'. This popularity was maintained through to 2015, where it was once again the most searched term on BitTorrent websites. In a 2013 interview with TorrentFreak, YIFY attributed the success of his group's releases to the consistency of the information and cover art coming with the movies, as well as the small file sizes allowing for easier accessibility. In January 2014, Yiftach announced that he was retiring from encoding and uploading, mentioning that it was 'time for a change' in his life. The website rebranded to YTS, and moved to a new domain name at YTS.RE. Management and encoding was handed over to the existing team of staff members. The encoding and uploading job was given to "OTTO", the nickname for the automated system that YTS would run on until the end of the operation. The entire website was re-programmed at the backend and redesigned at the frontend in February 2015, as the site was dealing with an increased number of technical issues due to an increasing number of visitors (approximately one million unique visitors a day, at the time) In March 2015, The YTS staff were informed by the domain registry FRNIC that their current domain YTS.RE was frozen and would be suspended by the end of March. The cause of this suspension was unclear, although legal pressure from copyright holders was the speculated reason. By March 20, 2015, the website had been successfully moved to a new domain, YTS.TO. In October 2015, the YIFY website went down, with no word from any of the staff or those connected with the site, and no new YIFY releases. It was confirmed on October 30, 2015 that YIFY/YTS was shut down permanently. The site was shut down due to a lawsuit coming from the MPAA. They filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the website's operator, accusing him of "facilitating and encouraging massive copyright infringement". This news came as a surprise to some, such as a spokesman for the New Zealand Screen Association who would have expected the site to have been operating from Eastern Europe, the case with some other past websites. Swery was able to settle out of court a month later, signing a non-disclosure agreement. Yiftach did not resist legal action in any way, and co-operated with authorities as needed. In a 2016 Reddit AMA, Yiftach justified this saying that he never intended to "put up a fight", and had frequently told himself “When someone asks you to stop properly, you stop”. Additionally, YIFY had a registered company in the United Kingdom, titled YTS.RE LTD, incorporated on 5 February 2015. The company was based in a virtual office in London. The company was dissolved in February 2016.